Well, that's a fantastically vague question!

Obviously, no-one can answer your question in any detail without knowing more details about what you're trying to do. Generally, this is the sort of problem that is impossible to do with 100% accuracy - even a human wouldn't be able to do it accurately. For example, "Goldman Sachs" - is that a person's name, or a business name? Most humans will know that Goldman Sachs is the name of a business, but it could feasibly be the name of a person. Similarly, in the UK we have a chain of shops called John Lewis.

The best you could do might be to match your list of names to a list of known first names, and possibly come up with other rules based on the number of words in the name (a single word is more likely to be a business name) etc. You'll still only have a rough estimate, though, and will have lots of mistakes, guaranteed.

Good luck!

Chris. -------------------------------------------------------- Elvis SAS Log Analyser - http://www.oview.co.uk/elvis --------------------------------------------------------

von-hippel.1@osu.edu wrote: > Has anyone developed code for distinguishing business names from > personal names?